Seven Hundred Persons Oppressed and Persecuted at Berne

In the year 1671 a severe persecution arose again against the Anabaptists in the said dominion of Berne. It was so harsh, and lasted so long, that it seemed the authorities would not stop until they had utterly driven that people out of their dominion, or exterminated them. As a result, about seven hundred persons, small and great, found themselves compelled to leave their homes, give up their property, and many of them their relatives too, along with their earthly fatherland, and to go with the rest to the Palatinate, hoping the Lord would so order it that they might find a place to live there. We were eyewitnesses of how it went when they arrived there, and we inspected place after place where they had come to find homes.

However, just before we went there, we had received several letters from the persecuted people themselves, and from others who wrote in their name and as they were told. These letters plainly state the circumstances and the condition of this persecution, just as we had heard it from their own lips. We thought it best to include them here, so that the Christian reader, reading them, may imagine that he hears the account not from those who heard or saw it, but from the very people who suffered this persecution. The letters read as follows: